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Legal News Archive For
May, 2009

Los Angeles—DNA evidence has led L.A.P.D. cold case investigators to arrest a man they believe may have been responsible for killings dating as far back as 1955.
L.A. Police Chief William Bratton said that John Floyd Thomas Jr. may be one of the worst serial killers in the history of the natio...

Earlier this week, a lawsuit which alleges that a division of Boeing Co. helped United States operatives to abduct terrorism suspects and send them abroad to be tortured was revived by a federal appeals court.
Named in the suit is Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a unit of Boeing. The company is accused ...

Oral arguments were heard by the U.S. Supreme Court recently in the case of a man who was convicted in 1993 of the rape and assault of a prostitute.
William Osborne, whose lawyers decided at his original trial not to seek more stringent DNA testing, fearing that it would work against their clien...

Washington—The CIA will no longer employ private contractors to fill security jobs at secret overseas prisons, say agency insiders.
Leon Panetta, Director of the CIA, has made the decision to end the agency's use of contractors at the prisons, which are currently empty. No new prisoners have b...

NEW YORK--The Bill Gates-founded Microsoft Corporation is in a familiar position on Wednesday. A Rhode Island federal jury found Microsoft guilty of infringing Uniloc's software security patents and ended with a demand that the company pay $338 million. Microsoft has seen such a demand before, but ...

Before he was elected, Barack Obama was a harsh critic of the Iraq war. He voted against then-President Bush's war spending bill in 2007, after which Bush used his veto in order to force Congress to remove a withdrawal timeline from the $99 billion measure.
Now President Obama is asking for $83....

Palm Bay, FL—A security officer who worked at Orlando International Airport was arrested this week on drug and weapons charges.
The man, who is employed by the Department of Homeland Security's Transportation Security Administration, had allegedly been involved in illegal drug trafficking for ...

Los Angeles—Two women, a phlebotomist and a mortuary worker, have been charged in an insurance fraud scheme involving fake funerals.
Faye Schilling, 60, and Jean Crump, 66, are accused of having staged sham funerals in order to collect on life insurance policies. Authorities say the two purcha...

The United States government is hard at work, responding to a pirate attack against American citizens—the first in recent times. The Obama administration is speaking with the shipping company in order to find out the answers to many questions regarding the American-flag ship, which was hijacked o...

PORTLAND—The famous Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood, Cape Elizabeth accountant Joseph McNulty, and three of their business partners are suing a Portland lawyer and his firm. The legal battles concerns previous legal advice given to the group.
The United States District Court received the ...

Frankfort, KY—Two attorneys who cheated their clients out of millions in a pharmaceutical settlement now face decades in prison, and must return some funds, said a jury.
On Tuesday, jurors in a U.S. District Court decided that the attorney's Shirley Cunningham Jr. and William Gallion, are resp...

Boulder, CO—A professor at the University of Colorado who published a controversial essay comparing 9/11 terrorism victims to Holocaust leader Adolf Eichmann has been awarded damages in his wrongful termination suit – but the damages only amount to $1.
Churchill, 61, was fired from his posit...

A gunman who allegedly shot and killed three police officers over the weekend has been tied to white-supremacist websites, authorities say.
Richard Poplawski, who had been evicted from the home he shared with his mother, was lying in wait for the police. The three officers were responding to a d...

A man suspected of airplane theft flew carelessly from Canada across three states.
Adam Dylan Leon, 31, was arrested in Ellsinore, Missouri on Tuesday, after landing the single-engine, four-seat Cessna after a six-hour flight on Monday night. He landed the plane on a highway, taxied to a side ro...

A nursing student at the Universidad de Zamboanga (UZ) was asked to wear a short-sleeved white frock in her junior year. This may not be alarming to many, but this standard procedure violated Mirza Guldam's teachings of Islam. As she prepared for hands-on training for nursing in the hospital owned ...

A federal appeals court ruled earlier this week that Michigan's Providence Hospital, which released a mentally ill man who later killed his estranged wife, can be sued by the woman's family.
The estate of Marie Moses Irons had filed a lawsuit against the hospital. In a 2007 ruling by U.S. Distri...

JERUSALEM (JTA)--A U.S. Immigration judge granted the elimination of a deportation sentencing for convicted Nazi guard John Demjanjuk.
Demjanjuk, an 89-year-old retired auto worker, had his United States citizenship taken away in 2002 because he lied about his Nazi past as a guard at the Sobibor...

MUMBAI—An ambulance driver was caught in the Mumbai neighborhood of Trombay, on Saturday evening, and charged with drunk driving. Prakash Salve, 30, was returning from Ahmednager after transporting a dead body there. Authorities say that Salve was so inebriated that a breath analysis recorded a b...

Harrison County, MS—Two advocacy programs are filing suit against a Mississippi juvenile detention center, alleging that the youth in custody there are being subjected to physical and mental abuse, and live in filthy, subpar conditions.
The Harrison County Juvenile Detention Center, a privatel...

Some foreign detainees held at Bagram Airfield, a U.S. air base in Afghanistan, may contest their detention in U.S. Courts, a federal judge recently ruled.
Four prisoners, who had each been held at Bagram for over six years, constitute the basis of the case. Judge John Bates ruled last week that...

AUSTIN, TX—A Washington D.C. attorney who spoke in Austin recently reported that two bills pending in the Texas legislature could open the litigation floodgates to mesothelioma plaintiffs who had only a minimum amount of exposure to asbestos.
The Senate Bill 1123, introduced by Republican Sena...

Bozeman, MT—Last week, a female professor at Montana State University, who had charged the school with discrimination in the areas of promotion and pay, lost her case.
Aleksandra Vinogradov had claimed that the university discriminated against her because she is a woman. Vinogradov, an enginee...

NEWPORT NEWS, Va—On Thursday, Michael Vick's lawyer informed a bankruptcy court that the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback has lined up a $10-an-hour construction job for when he gets out of prison.
Michael Vick's first court appearance was intended to explain his personal financial situation...

GENESEO, Ny—Three SUNY-Geneseo students have been charged with criminally negligent homicide in the alcohol-poisoning death of a sophomore who was pledging for an off-campus fraternity.
Arman Partamian, a 19-year-old from Flushing, New York, was found dead face-down in a mattress on Sunday, Ma...

Columbus, IN—With the floundering economy and the soaring unemployment rate, workers are doing everything in their power these days to protect their own jobs. Older workers in the state of Indiana may receive a helping hand, if a new bill passes.
H.B. 1014, sponsored by Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Ga...

BOSTON—Zeituni Onyango, the paternal aunt of President Barack Obama, will not appear before an immigration judge again until February of next year. In the meantime, she will be able to remain in the United States, a judge ruled recently.
Onyango, 56, has applied for asylum in the U.S. “due t...

On Wednesday the Supreme Court said that the Environmental Protection Agency may consider whether the cost of protecting fish and other aquatic creatures is feasible. This kind of protection would involve advanced upgrades for older power plants—a defeat for environmentalists who had challenged t...

The justice system in Kentucky, and around the nation, is looking outside the box—or outside the cell—when it comes to criminal rehabilitation.
With 1 in every 31 adults in this country currently incarcerated or on probation or parole, many states are finding that they can no longer afford t...

Hartford, CT—Earlier this week, a the foreign defendant to be convicted in an Internet-based financial scam was sentenced to more than four years in prison.
Last year, Ovidiu-Ionut Nicola-Roman was charged in a global “phishing” scheme perpetrated by 38 people in Connecticut and California...

The New Jersey Office of the Attorney General announced the launch of eHarmony's new website “Compatible Partners,” for gay and lesbian users, earlier this week. The creation of the site was the result of a settlement with Eric McKinely, a gay man from New Jersey. New Jersey Division on Civil R...

Los Angeles—Two brothers have been charged by the Los Angeles County City Attorney's office for multiple labor violations at the four LA-area car wash facilities they own.
The brothers and their supporters, however, claim that the charges are racially and politically motivated. Benny Pirian, 3...

WASHINGTON—On Tuesday, the Supreme Court eliminated a cigarette maker's appeal of a $79.5 million award to a smoker's widow, ending a 10-year legal fight to keep her from collecting.
The case has seen several appellate courts shortly after Mayola Williams prevailed on March 30, 1999, in the cl...

An appeals court ratified that Timothy McVeigh's lawyer cannot claim a charitable tax deduction for donating prosecution materials from the Oklahoma City bombing case.
On Friday, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals—consisting of a three-judge panel—upheld a tax court ruling that eliminated the...

In one of the stiffest punishments ever to be handed down in a white-collar criminal case, Lance K. Poulsen of National Century Financial Enterprises was sentenced last week to 30 years in prison.
Poulsen, 65, founded National Century, a Dublin, OH-based business which provided loans to health-c...

Las Vegas, NV—A physician and his wife have been convicted of treating patients with fake Botox, and have been sentenced to serve time in federal prison.
Stephen Lee Seldon, 54, and his wife, Deborah Martinez seldon, 41, were convicted in November 2008 on 14 counts of mail fraud and one count ...

DES MOINES, IA—In this increasingly bleak economic climate, internet-based scams and electronic embezzlement cases are up, report Des Moines police.
Part of the reason is due to the increase in personal computer ownership and use, which has led criminals off the street and onto the information...

Washington, DC—The Employee Free Choice Act – popularly known as the “card check” bill, since it would allow workers to unionize by signing pro-union cards, instead of having to hold a secret-ballot election – is losing momentum in today's politically divisive climate.
Last week, EFCA ...

Two arguments which came before the Supreme Court on Monday morning, Travelers Indemnity Company v. Bailey and the consolidated case Common Law Settlement Counsel v. Bailey, reportedly congregated a full house. Among the crowds of bankruptcy and insurance law professionals was former New York State...

Asbestos litigation is expected to rise globally in the coming decades, experts say. Many factors are contributing to push asbestos litigation onto the international stage.
According to defense attorney Kirk Hartley, who recently spoke before a Beverly Hills conference of asbestos lawyers, judge...

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